Valuetainment - June 15, 2026


“From Lunchroom to MILLIONAIRE” - How SpaceX’s IPO Turned 4,400 Employees Into Millionaires

Topics
SpaceX IPO and employee wealth SpaceX IPO and retail investing
Hosted by
Patrick Bet-David
Mentioned
SpaceX IPO Elon Musk Trevor Heiss Efren Grandpa Knows Everything Bernie Sanders Brad Gerstner Altimeter Scorebet Heise Benny Tesla Adam
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Episode Stats


Length

12 minutes

Words per minute

201.12

Word count

2,540

Sentence count

177

Harmful content

Misogyny

2

sentences flagged

Hate speech

3

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

SpaceX IPO could turn 4,400 employees into millionaires. Elon Musk will be the first trillionaire ever in the history of mankind today. Today, in a couple hours, Elon will be worth $1.7 Trillion.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Bet mode activated.
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00:00:30.720 SpaceX IPO could turn 4,400 employees into millionaires.
00:00:36.520 Crazy, crazy story.
00:00:38.240 Imagine you've been working at a company for all these years,
00:00:40.420 and then all of a sudden, equity, equity, equity.
00:00:42.960 And you're like, I don't know if I believe in equity.
00:00:44.580 I don't know if I've seen anything happen with equity.
00:00:46.380 And then all of a sudden, boom.
00:00:47.660 Oh, I love equity.
00:00:49.060 I didn't know this is how it works.
00:00:50.600 This is how it works.
00:00:51.360 Well, here's a story.
00:00:53.400 Officially, Elon, as of a few hours ago, is worth $980 billion.
00:00:57.940 Today, in a couple hours,
00:00:59.520 Elon will be the first trillionaire
00:01:01.680 ever in the history of mankind, 1.00
00:01:04.260 including some of these oil people, 1.00
00:01:05.780 because even these oil families
00:01:07.100 that got a trillion dollars,
00:01:08.220 it's between 42 sons.
00:01:10.000 So it's not like you're worth a trillion dollars.
00:01:11.700 You're sharing it with 42 other sons
00:01:13.300 or eight other sons.
00:01:14.640 So let me read this to you.
00:01:15.500 As Trevor Heiss was getting ready
00:01:16.780 to graduate from college in 2011,
00:01:18.920 his parents wanted him to take
00:01:20.280 what they saw as a stable job at GE.
00:01:23.320 Honey, go work at GE.
00:01:25.020 But Mr. Heiss had landed an internship at a startup he loved.
00:01:29.640 Against his parents' advice, he stayed for a full-time job at a young company.
00:01:34.620 And the next 12 years, the startup was Elon Musk's SpaceX.
00:01:38.880 Today, Mr. Heiss has more than 100,000 shares of SpaceX that he earned from his time working there with a rocket maker expected to go public at $135 a share.
00:01:52.340 Mr. Heise's SpaceX stock is officially worth $13.5 million.
00:01:56.420 SpaceX's IPO is expected to make a lot of people rich, even richer.
00:01:59.800 First in the queue is Mr. Musk, 54, which is likely to become the world's first trillionaire.
00:02:03.340 But the group will gain life-changing wealth for the first time.
00:02:06.280 SpaceX's current and former employees, the company has 22,000 employees and hundreds more left over the years.
00:02:13.280 Some were hourly blue-collar workers who toiled at launch sites.
00:02:16.600 Others sat for days straight in one's windowless office at SpaceX Industrial Complex in South Texas.
00:02:24.580 For many, their work is about to pay off big time that the stock was part of their compensation.
00:02:29.120 More than 4,400 current and SpaceX employees are likely to become millionaires of the IPO,
00:02:33.620 and 400 are expected to earn a minimum VINI of $100 million or more.
00:02:40.080 For 33 or so employees that are non-C-suites, non-directors, non-VP, non-managers, are getting paid $200 million to $400 million.
00:02:48.060 Tom, $1.7 trillion.
00:02:50.560 Never such a thing has happened before.
00:02:52.780 Why is this such a big deal?
00:02:54.460 It's a big deal because he's private, and he built it.
00:02:57.640 That's what the big deal is.
00:02:59.200 If you're part of the—you know, I'll say this, but everybody knows what I mean when I say this.
00:03:02.660 If you're part of the Lucky Sperm Club and you pop out as son number seven of the Sultan of Brunei or something, that really doesn't count.
00:03:10.080 You're being born into a family where the ATM of Earth just spits out money.
00:03:15.700 I like that, Tom.
00:03:16.620 Silver spoon mentality.
00:03:18.000 The ATM of Earth.
00:03:19.480 He's done this himself.
00:03:21.400 And, you know, remember May 21st, 2025?
00:03:24.400 I was looking up this morning just for kicks, 5.30 a.m.
00:03:27.500 I was looking up negative stories about Elon Musk when he left the White House.
00:03:32.400 Because I just wanted to remember that.
00:03:34.060 The Atlantic ran a story, the decline and fall of Elon Musk.
00:03:39.800 May 21st, 2025.
00:03:41.740 Oh, Lord, what will he do now?
00:03:43.740 He's got to go back to work, figure out his company.
00:03:46.000 Now he's going to be a trillionaire.
00:03:47.300 But number one, it's private, and he built it.
00:03:49.960 And he built it despite doubt.
00:03:52.360 He built it that many entrepreneurs face, doubt from family, doubt from investors, doubt from business partners.
00:03:58.760 And he did it.
00:03:59.820 That's why this is so big.
00:04:00.980 And actually, I saw today, Brad Gerstner of Altimeter said that the magic number, I think, is 141.5.
00:04:09.100 At 141.5 on the stock, he is a trillionaire, which means just after it goes out, it's there.
00:04:16.960 And so I think this is great, and this is what the big deal is, is because he's done it there.
00:04:22.700 Oh, you're going to have all the pundits.
00:04:24.020 We can talk about all the other stuff around this.
00:04:25.880 But you have to remember what's also a big deal today, retail.
00:04:30.840 This is people like you and me, Benny.
00:04:32.920 The retail demand is $70 billion of retail demand.
00:04:38.520 which means just the retail demand could fill the whole IPO of $75 million.
00:04:45.640 $75 billion is what's being raised in the IPO.
00:04:48.900 And by the way, you know what the previous record for the amount raised in IPO was?
00:04:53.080 It was Saudi Aramco, the national oil company, in 2020, and they raised $29.4 billion.
00:05:01.040 So this is raising almost 3x.
00:05:03.580 That's why it's a big deal.
00:05:04.780 Adam, thoughts?
00:05:05.980 Well, look, Bernie Sanders is going to have to have a new lingo.
00:05:08.560 He's going to say, the millionaires and the billionaires and the trillionaires.
00:05:11.340 Remember, he'll leave out the M.
00:05:13.060 He'll leave out the millionaires now.
00:05:14.500 But congratulations to these people who stuck it out.
00:05:19.080 I mean, some of them have been with them how many years?
00:05:21.160 Ten plus years.
00:05:22.140 When SpaceX was just a figment of Elon's imagination.
00:05:26.920 So the question at this point is because, you know, I'm here for the retail guy,
00:05:30.440 for the average investor out there.
00:05:32.020 Should you buy SpaceX IPO?
00:05:34.540 should you right uh i don't know if you should because typically what what well i guess what
00:05:40.740 elon is doing is he's actually trying to prioritize the retail investor typically the retail investor
00:05:46.000 is sort of the odd man out usually goes to what more institutional capital or that are the ultra
00:05:50.900 wealthy you kind of get in at a good price retail is usually the exit for the institutions bingo
00:05:55.500 so most people actually i think the the average number is uh minus 21 percent if you try to get
00:06:03.920 in on the IPO. So here's my advice to the average investor, if I may, if you're not going to get in
00:06:08.080 on the IPO, which I don't necessarily recommend. Don't chase the IPO. I would wait six to 12
00:06:15.320 months to see basically where the market goes. Wait for the hype to kind of die down. What do
00:06:19.920 they say? Don't buy the rumors. Don't buy the news. But last but not least, everyone I know
00:06:27.240 that has got wealthy in the stock market has done this one thing. And it's very simple, but it's
00:06:31.200 going to take a while what's the one thing buy and hold it's a strategy we talked about that
00:06:35.760 with crypt the other day the hodl situation but you're not going to get rich by chasing every
00:06:40.500 single ipo you're going to get rich by buying great companies with revenue with earnings with
00:06:45.520 profit and holding on it for decades i wish there was something easier but that's my advice
00:06:50.460 i just i first of all i i what's an ipo i absolutely love the story because if you believe
00:06:55.940 in the man you believe in the vision that's the type of stuff that happens especially those
00:07:00.040 regular employees one of them was making him tuna fish sandwiches pat with no windows no nothing
00:07:04.560 just sitting there and if you believe in the leader and you believe in the vision like i said
00:07:08.120 it's going to be good and mind you 100 if you watch any of his documentaries you watch his uh
00:07:12.500 if you read his books the failures the fit the hundreds and millions and millions of dollars
00:07:18.120 i remember the documentary where it's like well i gotta find another 100 million dollars he never
00:07:21.940 stopped he never quit and then you know you start watching videos of rockets leaving every day and
00:07:25.980 coming back in and landing inside the net.
00:07:28.200 Such a great point you're making.
00:07:30.100 You believed in it, and you waited, and you never gave up on this guy, Pat,
00:07:33.540 even when, and you remember the clip where he's sitting in that interview, Tom,
00:07:38.120 and he's crying.
00:07:39.580 He's crying because the people he looked up to,
00:07:41.880 the astronauts that made him get into what he's doing,
00:07:44.480 were all doubting him in Congress.
00:07:46.040 And they were all on the government side of NASA saying,
00:07:48.100 no, don't do this, don't privatize it, don't do it.
00:07:50.960 And he got hurt, which I think motivated him more.
00:07:52.920 So good for him, Pat, good for SpaceX,
00:07:55.000 And God bless all of them.
00:07:56.020 And by the way, I want to tell you guys, SpaceX got started in 02.
00:07:59.000 Yes.
00:07:59.280 So you're talking about 24 years ago.
00:08:00.620 Really?
00:08:01.320 Yes, 24 years ago.
00:08:02.240 That long ago?
00:08:02.860 For the first six years, every day they said this was going to fail.
00:08:07.220 Every day.
00:08:07.860 Aerospace experts said Musk had no business building rockets.
00:08:10.980 The first three Falcon 1 launches failed.
00:08:13.360 By 08, SpaceX was nearly out of money.
00:08:15.920 So 08 is what?
00:08:16.900 20 years ago, 18 years ago, right, we're talking about.
00:08:19.420 Musk later said both Tesla and SpaceX were on the verge of collapse simultaneously.
00:08:25.000 had the fourth Falcon 1 launch failed in September of 2008.
00:08:29.220 So imagine, failure, failure, failure, failure.
00:08:31.700 Let me continue.
00:08:32.760 Controversy around SpaceX, the workplace culture.
00:08:37.100 SpaceX has repeatedly faced criticism over long work hours,
00:08:40.480 intense performance expectations, employee burnout,
00:08:43.440 lawsuits involving workplace conduct, discrimination allegations,
00:08:47.720 Elon Musk's public behavior challenges he had
00:08:50.060 when he's going through the pressure that he's dealing with
00:08:51.840 that nobody else knows about.
00:08:53.520 The government contracts, Starlink, all this stuff that he's going,
00:08:56.400 all the hate that he got nonstop while he's going through it.
00:09:00.020 And the people that stuck around are now going to celebrate
00:09:03.300 and their lives change.
00:09:05.060 And, by the way, for the rest of their lives,
00:09:07.500 that group is going to have a connection with each other
00:09:09.900 that nobody understands.
00:09:11.200 Do you remember the guy that we had that won a contest?
00:09:12.920 We should run it again, by the way.
00:09:14.180 Okay.
00:09:14.640 And he ended up being on a podcast.
00:09:15.660 Yeah, of course.
00:09:16.280 What was his name?
00:09:17.760 Efren?
00:09:18.260 It could have been Efren.
00:09:19.280 Remember when we had him on?
00:09:19.980 Well, he worked for SpaceX, right?
00:09:22.000 eight years wow and i said what was it like he says he was involved all the time we would see him
00:09:25.900 i said he was he said oh yeah he was always there talking to us spring steering the pod competition
00:09:30.320 what department's going to do better all this we love working for the guy so imagine these people
00:09:34.500 that are in it experiencing it loving it for the right person who stayed there what a phenomenal
00:09:40.320 story i'm happy for spacex i'm happy for every one of the employees whose lives are changing we
00:09:46.440 announced something on monday for father's day that's around the corner and let me tell you was
00:09:52.060 500 originally we were only doing 200 boxes we did 500 boxes pete just sent me a text right now
00:09:58.920 telling me they have sold 403 with 97 left and the hottest shirt out of all of them that's selling i
00:10:05.240 want you to see which shirt this is so if you love your father or your grandfather ladies gents take
00:10:11.240 a moment and do this and spend something. 1.00
00:10:13.480 They say we spend $230
00:10:15.680 every father's
00:10:17.240 and our father's, a lot more for mothers, but we spend
00:10:19.280 $230. Watch this video. You may be
00:10:21.200 inspired to get something for your father or your grandfather.
00:10:23.360 Go ahead. Folks, I don't know if you know or not, but every
00:10:25.260 year we spend $10 billion more on
00:10:27.200 Mother's Day than Father's Day. We don't get things
00:10:29.220 for fathers. We forget about it. It's just the
00:10:31.180 father. This year we're doing something special.
00:10:33.800 We got a box for all
00:10:35.340 great fathers in the world that says
00:10:37.240 the future looks bright. And here it
00:10:39.240 says father protector provider in the box when that father that special father opens it up he
00:10:45.160 will get a mug that says future looks bright with father protector provider he'll get a future looks
00:10:51.360 bright hat they will also get a future looks bright rfid wallet on top of that a pen that says
00:10:57.020 father protector provider and you get to pick and choose four shirts for that incredible father one
00:11:02.740 of them is the best that ever with future looks bright on the back the other one will say father
00:11:07.340 protective provider the third one is raising leaders building legacy i love every single one
00:11:12.100 of them but the last one's going to be so special you ready for this it says grandpa knows everything
00:11:17.520 so if you've got a grandpa send it to him let him open he's going to be excited we only have 500 of
00:11:22.600 these boxes if you want to get one of these for a special father go to vtmerch.com place the order
00:11:28.740 before it sells out having said that happy fathers everybody uh if you go to the website vtmerch.com
00:11:35.340 I want you to see what these shirts look like.
00:11:36.980 So on the website, refresh the page.
00:11:40.200 Okay, right there.
00:11:40.740 Click on Shop Now.
00:11:42.220 So if you go there, zoom in a little bit.
00:11:43.980 So Raising Leaders, Building Legacies, Father Protective Provider,
00:11:46.780 go a little bit lower, go a little bit lower.
00:11:48.980 You see right there, Grandpa Knows Everything.
00:11:51.320 And the best part about every one of these shirts,
00:11:52.980 you know what it says on the back of it?
00:11:54.620 Go on the shirt if you can.
00:11:57.040 Go on the shirt and go back.
00:11:58.140 There you go.
00:11:58.780 Go one more.
00:11:59.540 Boom.
00:11:59.760 Future looks bright on all of them.
00:12:00.820 So when you do order the box,
00:12:02.440 just make sure you choose the right side for the shirts.
00:12:05.340 which one you want and then also be sure to choose one of the two hats between a red and a blue and
00:12:10.740 the packages will be mailed out uh next week to get to the folks that you wanted to get to so
00:12:16.660 having said that go to vtmerge.com place your order and if you don't want to order the box you
00:12:21.440 want to get 20 father's day but you know hats for somebody the best out of it just order 20 we had
00:12:26.240 a couple people that ordered 20 shirts just to give away the shirts to fathers and their companies
00:12:30.800 and their organization and their family if you enjoy this video you want to watch more videos
00:12:34.120 like this, click here. And if you want to watch the entire podcast, click here.